The delivery arrived a bit faster than expected.
Ming Can was staring blankly at the computer screen when her phone vibrated. Relieved as if granted amnesty, she stood up. “I’ll go get the delivery!”
Su Zhi didn’t reply, her gaze moving away from the ceiling and landing on Ming Can’s hurried figure.
Ming Can brought the takeout to the bedside table and opened it: a bowl of millet porridge and two bowls of egg drop noodles with dough drops. The millet porridge was leftover from the morning, which she conveniently reheated, while the dough drop soup was freshly ordered, tomato and egg flavored, steaming with white mist.
“This dough drop soup is crazy good. I ordered two portions. Do you want to try some?” she asked.
Su Zhi’s gaze lingered on that portion of dough drop soup for half a second.
Ming Can immediately understood. “We’re eating this one! If I can’t finish the millet porridge, I’ll eat it later. I have a big appetite!”
She adjusted the electric bed a bit higher, and as she leaned toward the bedside holding one of the bowls of dough drop soup, out of the corner of her eye she noticed the hand Su Zhi had curled at her side tighten slightly.
For the upcoming swallow, she had practiced swallowing countless times.
Ming Can saw it all, but didn’t point it out. She scooped a spoonful of the soup, brought it to Su Zhi’s lips, and said in the most casual tone possible, “Have a try, it’s super good!”
Su Zhi pressed her lips together, then slowly enveloped the spoon. After taking it in, she didn’t swallow immediately, trying to adjust her breathing. Her Adam’s apple rolled up and down, as if she were using all her strength.
Ming Can’s hand holding the spoon hovered in mid-air, not daring to move or rush her, staring only at her slightly trembling throat as she held her breath.
Su Zhi bobbed her head and swallowed that mouthful of soup.
She breathed slightly, pausing for a few seconds. Ming Can used a tissue to help wipe the moisture from the corners of her lips. Recovering a bit, Su Zhi reached out to take the spoon from her hand.
“Take it slow!”
Su Zhi didn’t have much strength. When she gripped the handle of the spoon, her wrist bones protruded, and the blue veins beneath her skin were faintly visible. She lowered her head, staring at that bit of soup in the spoon as if aiming at something.
Ming Can’s hand still loosely guarded underneath the spoon, just in case she spilled it.
The spoon shook, moving toward her lips. A drop gathered at the rim of the spoon, hanging precariously. Ming Can had already clutched a tissue in her palm in preparation.
Su Zhi’s lips touched the spoon.
This time she took it in a bit faster, and the swallowing motion wasn’t as blocked, though after swallowing, she frowned slightly, as if there was still something stuck in her throat.
“Slow down, no rush!” Ming Can nagged again, handing over the tissue to press against the corner of her mouth.
Su Zhi didn’t dodge, simply raising her eyes to look at her.
Their eyes met. Ming Can’s lips curved slightly, dimples dancing on both sides of her mouth, very sweet.
Su Zhi was momentarily dazed. After coming to her senses, she lowered her head and tremblingly scooped another spoonful toward her lips. Back and forth like this, she actually managed to successfully swallow the second and third mouthfuls.
Then she paused slightly, as if gathering strength.
“How is it?” Ming Can leaned in closer, her eyes sparkling. “Didn’t I say this place’s dough drop soup is really good?”
Su Zhi didn’t answer. She scooped another spoonful, bit by bit feeding it into her mouth.
Eating was extremely difficult for her. Every spoonful required a pause, a swallow, and waiting for the feeling of exhaustion to pass before she could move on to the next.
By the seventh spoonful, she finally lacked the strength to eat any further. She put the spoon back down and shook her head.
Ming Can provided timely encouragement from the side. “Awesome, you ate quite a bit. You’ll have the strength to help me edit my resume later!”
Su Zhi.
After drinking those few mouthfuls of soup, her eyelids were too heavy to lift.
Ming Can packed up the bowls and chopsticks, put the trash into a bag, and poured her another cup of warm water to place on the bedside table. Having finished all this, she stood by the bed, looking at Su Zhi’s bloodless face.
Su Zhi didn’t open her eyes, but felt the other’s gaze. She parted her lips slightly to urge. “Done eating, hurry up and write.”
Ming Can.
She wolfed down her bowl of dough drop soup in a few bites, resignedly returning to the coffee table and continuing to stare blankly at the computer.
As for resumes, Ming Can really didn’t know how to write one. Throughout her four years of college, apart from attending classes, she only did part-time jobs. She hadn’t done a single high-end, long-cycle, slow-paying project. The only things she could bring out were her exam scores and annual scholarships, but corporate recruitment never looked at those.
“Project experience.”
A voice came from behind.
Ming Can turned her head and found that Su Zhi had opened her eyes at some point, watching her.
“Oh.” Hesitantly, she carried the computer over.
Su Zhi raised a hand, asking for the computer. Ming Can raised the head of the bed slightly and held out the computer for the other to see.
“Project One: Campus Second-Hand Book Trading Platform (2024.03 – 2024.06)”
“Role:”
“Implemented Features: User login and registration, product posting and search, in-app messaging system.”
Su Zhi’s gaze paused on the role column for a moment, then she looked up. “What did you do?”
Ming Can was stunned. “Just. Just draw pages and write APIs.”
“Be specific.” Su Zhi’s cursor moved to the role column, her tone carrying a touch of professional formality. “What pages did you write? How was the login and registration interaction handled? What framework did you use?”
Ming Can finally understood what she meant and racked her brains to recall. “Login and registration were just ordinary forms, using. Using Vue. I had just learned it back then, so it was written pretty crudely. For the product search part, I called the backend API using axios, with pagination display and a filtering feature.”
For every sentence she spoke, Su Zhi added to it afterward, line by line, turning those “pretty crude” details into well-crafted descriptions:
“Implemented component-based development based on the Vue framework, encapsulating highly reusable form validation components.”
“Handled request and response uniformly through axios interceptors to maintain login state.”
“Implemented multi-condition filtering and pagination display in the product search module, optimizing initial page load speed.”
Ming Can looked at those words, feeling a bit dazed. “This. I had just started doing it back then, components and things weren’t encapsulated that thoroughly.”
Su Zhi ignored her, moving the cursor to the next line. “What other projects are there?”
Ming Can thought about it. “There’s also an administrator backend. For the order management part, I wrote the return process, that kind of state machine.”
“Mmm.” Su Zhi’s fingers moved again.
She typed very slowly, stopping from time to time to gather enough strength before continuing. Ming Can squatted beside the bed, staring at the screen as she watched her turn those fragmented, unstructured coding experiences into neat entries on a resume.
When writing the third project, Su Zhi’s fingers hovered over the keyboard for a long time without falling.
Ming Can looked up and saw that she had her eyes closed, her chest rising and falling faster than before.
“Su Zhi, why don’t you rest for a bit first? I’ll write the rest myself later. I’ve learned enough by now to write it myself,” Ming Can whispered inquiringly.
Su Zhi didn’t open her eyes, simply shaking her head. But her hand had slid down from the keyboard, resting at her side with her fingertips curled slightly.
Ming Can gently moved the computer aside and stood up to pull the curtains a bit more. The light was filtered, darkening the room.
“Get some sleep,” she said, lowering the hospital bed flat.
Su Zhi didn’t object. Her eyelids were too heavy; the strength she had mustered up from those few spoonfuls of soup seemed to have been entirely spent on editing Ming Can’s resume. Her breathing gradually grew steady, yet her brow was still lightly furrowed, as if there was still something unfinished.
Ming Can squatted by the bed and watched her for a moment.
A Su Zhi who had passed out from exhaustion was somewhat different from when she was awake. When awake, she was always aloof, speaking little and showing few expressions, as if separated by some kind of barrier. Now that the barrier was removed, her facial features appeared much softer, though she was far too thin, with the curve of her cheekbones clearly visible beneath her skin.
Ming Can gently reached out and brushed a stray lock of hair from her temples.
Su Zhi didn’t wake up, her brow relaxing just a fraction.
Ming Can simply squatted there, staring blankly at her sleeping face. The light in the room grew darker and darker, shifting from warm yellow to grayish blue, then sinking from grayish blue into the dark cyan of evening.
After who knows how long, Su Zhi’s eyelashes fluttered.
She opened her eyes and saw Ming Can still squatting by the bed, a pair of eyes staring right at her.
“What. What time is it?” Su Zhi’s voice was hoarse to the extreme.
“Past six.” Ming Can stood up, her legs a bit numb. She leaned against the edge of the bed and looked at her. “Are you hungry? What should we eat tonight?”
Su Zhi didn’t answer, her gaze falling on the computer, which was still lit up on the bedside table.
“Is the resume finished?” she asked.
Ming Can was startled, not expecting the other to check this the moment she woke up.
“Not yet.”
Su Zhi sized up her face for a few seconds, then said in a very, very small voice. “Only enthusiastic about eating.”
Sounding like a complaint. Ming Can froze for two seconds, then the corners of her mouth curved upward.
“Su Zhi,” she looked at her, her pretty almond eyes narrowing slightly, “were you joking with me just now?”
Su Zhi didn’t make a sound.
Ming Can leaned closer, ignoring the pain when her knees bumped against the edge of the bed, and tilted her head to look at Su Zhi’s face. “Were you joking with me? What you said just now, that was a joke, right?”
Su Zhi’s pupils shifted to the side, avoiding her gaze.
“Su Zhi?”
“Su Zhi.” Su Zhi pressed her lips together and finally spoke, her voice still detached. “Bring the computer over.”
“Yeah, working again.” Ming Can acted spoiled, her tone sweet and coquettish.
Su Zhi lifted her eyelids and glanced at her.
That glance lacked strength, yet inexplicably made Ming Can obedient. She pouted, picked up the computer, squatted back down by the bed, and tilted the screen toward Su Zhi.
“Where did we write up to?” Su Zhi’s voice was still hoarse, coughing twice after asking.
Ming Can raised a hand and pointed to the blank space of the third project. Su Zhi followed her gaze, lingering on the screen for a few seconds, then turned her head to look at her. “Didn’t you say you’d learned enough, yet you haven’t written a single word?”
Ming Can.